Change Management - How to Make it Work and Deliver the Benefits

The western world-view of business can be somewhat simplistically summarised by the "3 P's" - process, people and pounds sterling - a business climate where the "bottom line" is delivered by process - worked by people.

The traditional project approach to change management sees it as a set of tasks that if executed successfully get a result. In other words the typical process led approach which has failed so consistently and so spectacularly over the last 20 years!

Frequently the driver for initiating change is financial - and processes are designed and put in place to deliver the financial benefit. However, 70% of the time it just doesn't work!

Processes that work for people

But, in my view, process is just about people doing stuff - so ultimately it's all about people - and processes that work for people.

We are now living through a scenario of unprecedented change where many of the accepted paradigms are shifting. So a timely approach to managing change and achieving a successful programme implementation is [in my view] one that focuses greater attention on people.

5 key success factors

Here are the key factors that will determine the success of your initiative:

(1) Determining that you are embarking on a step change that sits outside of business as usual and needs to be handled as a specific step-change initiative
(2) The quality of leadership that you provide
(3) Using a programme management based approach to your step change initiative
(4) The thoroughness of your pre-programme review and planning process
(5) The extent to which you identify and address the cultural change in your organisation that is required to deliver the step change and the desired business benefit.

Micro-managing the set up of a step change initiative

In my work as change management specialist, I deliberately pay a lot of attention to the detail and process of successful strategies for managing change. I believe in micro-managing the set up of a step change initiative with a big front-end commitment of senior management time. It is worth it because if you think it all through properly - and set it all up correctly - you get the return on investment of that time in realised benefits.

Clearly the single biggest reason for the astonishingly high 70% failure rate has been the over-emphasis on project process rather than the people aspects - the failure to take full account of the impact of change on those people who are most impacted by it. Closely allied to that reason is the lack of process to directly address the human aspects of change.